The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
According to the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standard, a Home Node-B (HnB) or Home enhanced Node B (HeNB) is a device installed in a customer's premises that offers a coverage area to telecommunication devices in order to connect them to an operator's network via a broadband IP (Internet Protocol) backhaul. The Home Node-B (HnB) or Home enhanced Node B (HeNB) thus offers access to the operator's network via a “Universal Terrestrial Radio Access” air interface (UTRA in 3G networks, or EUTRA in Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks) to 3GPP User Equipments (UEs).
Home Node-Bs (HnB) or Home enhanced Node Bs (HeNB) operate as small cellular radio base stations, substantially indistinguishable to the UE from a wide area base station and which is maintained by the network operator but installed by the customer and located on his premises (residential, commercial (shopping malls), etc.)
The concept of a ‘femtocell’ is similar. However, the femtocell concept is not restricted to the 3GPP standard and femtocells may be based on other standards such as the CDMA2000 or WiMAX standards. The expression ‘Femtocell Access Point’ (FAP) may refer to the physical hardware that implements the air interface and the expression lemtocell' may refer to the associated area of service provided by it.
For the operator, the femtocells should not disrupt or otherwise interfere with the operation of fixed cellular infrastructures in existence either currently or in the future. For the customer, the FAP should be easy to install, require minimal maintenance and provide adequate coverage of the premises.
These characteristics may be addressed by providing the core network, via the broadband IP backhaul, with complete control over the operation of the FAP and the associated femtocell. The network may then undertake an installation process for the FAP that attempts to establish the FAP's place within the network before the FAP is allowed to make a transmission. Thus, once the FAP is powered up and has established a connection to the network, the network may establish the location of the FAP relative to other cells and to define a suitable operating envelope.
For example, the following set of actions may be performed:                Instruct the FAP to scan for other nearby radio cells and report signal strength and other measurements (This may include instructions to listen for specific cell sites),        Use this information to derive an (approximate) location for the FAP,        Instruct nearby terminals (UEs) to report their own measurements in order to provide information on cell sites that the FAP itself cannot receive (This may allow ‘hidden node’ problems to be pre-empted),        Use this extra information to derive a set of timings, operating channels, power levels and other operating parameters that the FAP may use without causing disruption to existing facilities, and        Repeat measurements and adjust operational parameters as necessary during the operational life of the FAP.        
Variations on the actions can be envisaged. For instance, in some regulatory environments, it might be required that the FAP establishes its location directly by using a service such as GPS. In other circumstances, some channels licenced to an operator might be dedicated to femtocells, others to macro cells, with consequent modifications to scanning, reporting and other processes involved in setting the operating parameters of the FAP.
Hence, a practical issue with the installation of a FAP may be the provision of a connection to a local IP backhaul service.
In residential premises, for example, this might involve coupling the FAP to an xDSL modem, a cable modem or some other form of broadband gateway. IEEE 802.3 Ethernet may be used to provide a wired connection between access point and peripheral (possibly via a router or other local distribution system) although other cable-based systems such as FireWire and
USB are possible carriers.
For example, FAP products may have provision for connection to the broadband gateway via a short range wireless connection. However, a problem that has to be resolved is configuration of the FAP's short range wireless port to match that of the short range wireless access point supported by the broadband gateway. For a WiFi port, for example, it may be necessary to select the desired wireless access point from a list of those that can be received and then enter security codes for WEP, WPA or WPA2 protocols. This requires either some form of user interface on the FAP or a wired service port (often USB) to enable configuration by a PC. One (if not both) may be costly, the other may be inconvenient to use.
Thus, there is a need for a method of installing a femtocell access point that limits the user's intervention.